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A while back, a friend from Spartanburg who was giving a the friendly ubiquitous invitation to visit, said, “some day when you’re out on your bike, just stop by for lunch. Did you know that you can ride all the way from Columbia to Spartanburg on Broad River Road?”
You can ride a long way on Broad River Road. I really like roads that go from here to there, roads that are common to several towns. Just yesterday, on the way home from our fish/raven/bear filled week, we stopped off at Hawk’s Nest State Park to gander into the New River Gorge. From US Rt. 19 south, you turn right onto US Rt. 60 to get to Hawk’s Nest State Park. It’s only about 7 miles. But if you go just past Hawk’s Nest, you start down the mountain, and by the time you reach the bottom, the New River has met with the Gauley River and they’ve become the Kanawha, which you follow all the way to the State Capitol. If you stay on US Rt. 60 for 35 more miles, you’ll enter my hometown, only a block from my parents’ house.
A bunch of nonsense? Not for Rod’s brain. So as we were making the short trek atop the New River Gorge to Hawk’s Nest, I announced this to my children. “Children, this is the main street that runs through Papaw and Mamaw’s town.” They, too, were fascinated. Go figure.
I guess, back in the day, this was no big deal. There were probably very few roads linking towns, and they tended to go directly there. One end of the road was the main drag of one town and the other end was the main drag of the other town. Maybe it went on through and linked another town too.
These days, most roads link up to a larger highway or freeway that in turn dumps you off at an exit at which you connect to another road that will take you to where you need to go, or take you to another road that will take you to where you need to go. This is all very convenient – for the trip – but it seems to have reduced towns to stops along or near to the freeway, rather than destinations that are connected to one another.
Even when I was a kid, there was only one way to get from our house to where I was yesterday. Now the interstate allows you to travel northwest, where you meet 19 and travel south to Rt. 60. The whole trek starts on Rt. 60 and ends on Rt. 60, but you’ve spent very little time on Rt. 60. Most people would do it this way. Take the highway, go really fast. Get to where you’re going. But you miss Glen Ferris, Kanawha Falls, Gorgeous gorge views, and countless tiny towns filled with friendly people who wave when you drive by.